Orenda
In the ethnic religion of the North American Iroquois, Orenda is an all-pervasive mythical life force that people, animals and their spirits (Oyaron) - as the only beings with a soul - possess. Through Orenda every living being is connected to all elements; nevertheless, Orenda is sometimes smaller, sometimes larger, because it also appears as the ability of living beings that more or less “exercise” it. So the Orenda of a medicine man , a successful hunter or a bear - even more so an angry bear or a storm - is particularly powerful. A religious specialist has a great orenda , a good hunter has an orenda superior to the orenda of the beast, or a singer shows his orenda. Orenda can be accumulated by people like material wealth. It can be increased through dreams , visions and prayers , for example to become a necromancer or healer . The transmission takes place in such a way that the human being temporarily "puts down" his orenda when communicating with the Oyaron. He tries to create compassion in the spirits in order to get Orenda transmitted from them.
While the Algonquian “ Manitu ” denotes both spirits and their powers, Orenda only stands for the spiritual powers. In addition, Manitu can also live “naturally” in plants and inanimate objects; Orenda, on the other hand, can only be transferred to it by certain people. If parts of such objects, in which Orenda worked mightily, are selected and stored, they serve as “ medicine ” in which the mysterious, transcendent power resides and can protect people.
Humans, witch and medicine spirits, animals and their spirits have a physical and a spiritual essence; that gives them free will and makes them unpredictable. In contrast, the sun, moon, earth, stars, wind and plants have only one physical essence and the Creator has only one spiritual essence, which is expressed in a free will that can only do good .
Orenda - "the great secret of the Iroquois" - is in the cosmology of these people the force that maintains the balance between the polar opposites of the universe. If the balance is disturbed, this is possibly the cause of an illness.
In today's Pan-Indianism , the term is often translated as “Great Spirit” and used synonymously with similar concepts from other tribes as a creator god in the sense of the Christian God with “Indian influences”. This change has already been historically attested and is probably due to the influence of the mission .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Christian F. Feest : Animated Worlds - The religions of the Indians of North America. In: Small Library of Religions , Vol. 9, Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-451-23849-7 . Pp. 77-79.
- ↑ Konrad Theodor Preuss : The natives of America. Volume 2 of the religious studies reading books by Alfred Bertholet (ed.), Edition, Mohr / Siebeck, Tübingen 1926. pp. 33–35.
- ^ Heide Göttner-Abendroth : Society in Balance. Gender, equality, consensus, culture in matrilineal, matrifocal, matriarchal societies . Documentation of the 1st World Congress for Matriarchy Research 2003 in Luxembourg. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-17-018603-5 . Pp. 269-270.
- ↑ Wolfgang Lindig, Mark Münzel: The Indians. Cultures and history of the Indians of North, Central and South America. dtv, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-423-04317-X . P. 103.